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July 17, 2007

When Auntie Donna died last week so tragically young, my daughters wanted to know why everyone was sad. Preschoolers just don’t comprehend death in all its heartrending finality. So I read this book to them. And they asked me to read it again. And again. Then they “read” it themselves, studying the pictures and telling their own versions to each other.

My girls were fascinated by little Lisa and her elderly buddy, Otto. Despite the many decades difference in their ages, the two are best friends. Together they engage in idyllic pursuits, telling stories, playing in Otto’s garden, sharing pilfered cookies, gazing at the stars. They eat cherry cake and count the pits as they spit them out. They dance exuberantly when Lisa hits a long-sought target with the slingshot that Otto made for her.

Lush-hued watercolor pictures illustrate the story’s action on each page. Most pages are bordered by childish pencil sketches of numbers, German words (the book’s original language) and figures that compliment the tale, such as the Native Americans and buffalo who appear below a contented Otto and Lisa lounging in the grass as Otto explains how certain tribes sometimes placed their dead in trees.

Then Otto gets sick and can’t get out of bed.

“Will you die soon?” Lisa asks, stroking Otto’s hand. “Mhmmm,” Otto nods, “I think so.” “Should we tie you to the top of a tree then?” Lisa wants to know. Otto laughs weakly. “No, old Otto just wants to be laid to rest in the ground,” he says. “Then I can slowly turn into the soil, just like the grass, remember? And someday flowers might even grow out of that earth. Imagine that!”

After Otto dies, Lisa struggles to understand why he left and where he went. Otto’s wife, Olga, helps the little girl understand that while her best friend is gone, he will live forever in her memory.

I am grateful to this book. It helped my daughters understand, and not be frightened by, the sorrow they saw around them. It gave them the solace of knowing that Auntie Donna was still with us in some way. And I found that it comforted me, too.

July 16, 2007

This is a simple book about a complex subject, but Raschka isn't given the task of explaining the hows or whys. His job is to raise a subject no one wants to discuss:

"No one likes to talk about dying. It's hard work."

And if dying is a topic that needs to come up in your household, this slender volume may be the tonic you need to smooth the way.

In it, balloons represent people, a notion explained in a forward by the Children's Hospice International, which will benefit from sales of the book. When dying children are asked to draw their feelings, they "often draw a blue or purple balloon, released and floating free."

Raschka, with his signature splotchy watercolors, reimagines these childlike notions with balloon figures whose strings intertwine, or who loop around to form limbs or angel's wings, with all the attendent symbolism. The circular heads bob together as if huddling around a deathbed or float freely as if escaping earthly bonds, with a few heavy black lines for the expressive faces.

All he does is offer a few sentences that having people around helps -- friends and family, doctors and nurses, quiet or noisy. The same is true whether it's an older person or a child who dies, though it's hardest to talk about the latter.

Perhaps I'm especially sensitive these days. I'm having to explain this terrible subject to my son, who often asks after one of his grandmas, but is puzzled and bored by my tortured explanations of what's wrong. This book isn't a way to explain it, as I said, only a way to get the conversation restarted on terms he can understand.